Where does 411.com get it's updates? [telecom]
Bill Horne
number: the listing was for another optical shop that she hasn't worked
at in years.
Where does 411.com get its updates from? Is there an update process that
covers all or most of the directory sites? I'd like to help my OD fix
her listing, but I don't want to tell her to update ten sites if I can
point her to one.
Bill
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Adam H. Kerman
>I looked up my optometrist in 411.com today, but it showed the wrong
>number: the listing was for another optical shop that she hasn't worked
>at in years.
>Where does 411.com get its updates from? Is there an update process that
>covers all or most of the directory sites? I'd like to help my OD fix
>her listing, but I don't want to tell her to update ten sites if I can
>point her to one.
411.com, address.com, and phonenumber.com are all whitepages.com. That
whitepages.com compiles some business listings is new within the last
year. They have a note that some business listings are from localeze.com
and that if that's the source, it's noted in the detailed listing, but
they don't tell you the source of other listings.
whitepages.com used to be pretty good when the lists they consolidated all
came from telephone directories but that hasn't been their business model
in a few years.
I wouldn't use the word "update" with these online databases. If they buy
a list, they add the information, and they have no interest in checking
if the information is out of date or never was correct. There's a difference
between list consolidation and a useful product.
Now, Intellius and Dun + Bradstreet, major brokers of business lists,
make an attempt to call each business telephone number in their database
once a year (so they claim), although I doubt they reach them all that often.
If they do encounter bad information, they remove it.
***** Moderator's Note *****
Thanks for the info. Is there an update process? In other words, how
can my eye doctor get her listing corrected?
Bill Horne
Moderator
John Mayson
> ***** Moderator's Note *****
>
> Thanks for the info. Is there an update process? In other words, how
> can my eye doctor get her listing corrected?
Admittedly I haven't checked myself in an online "white pages" in a
couple of years, but phone numbers I had when George W. Bush was still
governor of Texas, plus numbers I never had, still appeared.
Do people still use services like 411.com? Apparently at least one
Massachusetts resident does. These days I rely on Google. I think
your eye doctor would be better off creating a Google Places page than
trying to play whack-a-mole with all the online directories out there.
John
--
John Mayson <jo...@mayson.us>
Austin, Texas, USA
Lisa or Jeff
> I looked up my optometrist in 411.com today, but it showed the wrong
> number: the listing was for another optical shop that she hasn't worked
> at in years.
New Verizon phone books were distributed in our area, and they no
longer contain white pages listing. The directory said to use
wwww.verizon.com/whitepages .
This link brought up a very different kind of directory search that
seemed to be much more accurate than other types. It seems to be
based on directory listings, and you can even see the directory page.
I checked for my own current and past listings (that other search
engines always got wrong) and they were correct on this page. It also
did _not_ have any links to advertised services. Other search engines
have ads for what seems to be sleazy "find this person" services.
Adam H. Kerman
Oops, I made an error. I didn't mean Intellius, which is a list consolidator
of information about individuals, but InfoUSA as a major source of business
listings.
whitepages.com may or may not identify the source of the listing. If the
source is identified, then she will have to track it down there. If not,
this page has a link to a form to fill out: http://www.whitepages.com/help#edit-business-listing
The trouble is that there are no true sources of listings that don't come
from listings of telephone subscribers from the phone companies themselves.
These sites all sell to each other, and you cannot stop one site that's
consolidated bad information from selling it to another site that treats it
as an original source, but then won't tell anyone using their database where
it came from.
I'd check InfoUSA http://www.expressupdateusa.com/ and dnb.com/ She'll need
to find her DUNS number to use the latter. These two are the source for
other databases but may not be the source of the whitepages.com errors.
I'd also check yellowpages.com which will tell you where the bad information
came from, if it's necessary to call them.
It's a time consuming and ultimately futile process.
Adam H. Kerman
Whoa. I hadn't looked at the Dun & Bradstreet Web site in a while.
For those who don't know, D&B is a credit reporting and rating service for
businesses. I don't actually know if banks use it to make decisions on
business loans. They sell the rating service to businesses trying to establish
credit worthiness and to businesses that wish to extend credit to other
businesses. D-U-N-S is a number they assign to a business profile,
which may or may not be linked to a credit rating.
As D&B is also a list consolidator, they have an automatic process that
assigns a new D-U-N-S to what it thinks is another location for the same
business. However, a business can get out of date and inaccurate profiles
removed. If they can, a D-U-N-S is linked to a corporate file number assigned
by the state that issued the corporate charter. A business with one location
should have just the one D-U-N-S.
A business can update its profile: https://iupdate.dnb.com/iUpdate/
New as of January 8, 2011, the representative of the business updating
the profile must provide his own personally identifying information
including home address and home telephone number which must be used for
pattern matching against credit headers from a personal credit database.
The old eUpdate process to correct or update a D-U-N-S profile didn't used
to be that intrusive.
This crosses a line with personal privacy, so unless one's business
headquarters and home address are one and the same, I wouldn't volunteer
this information. Leave the inaccuracies in place, then.